Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Species That Don't Get Enough Publicity #5: Anchiceratops

Triceratops is my favorite dinosaur. I don’t know why. Maybe
it’s because it’s both a plant eater and intimidating. Maybe because it’s like
a rhino or a bull. Maybe because it can stand up and defeat the greatest
monster dinosaur in media. It’s been my
favorite dinosaur for a while, actually, although I’ve grown to know and love
the rest of the horned dinosaurs.Triceratops is by far the best known, but others have appeared in
media.The sister species Torosaurus
managed to get a supporting role in Walking With Dinosaurs, while the
spiky-frilled Styracosaurus has become second to only Triceratops in popularity
due to its unique look and made its film debut in the 1933 Kong movies (albeit
the scene was cut from the first).Pachyrhinosaurus has surprisingly been popular-being a background
dinosaur with Styracosaurus in Disney’s Dinosaur, playing a supporting role in
documentaries like The Dinosaurs, March of the Dinosaurs, and Jurassic Fight
Club, and finally being the star of the movie Walking With Dinosaurs.

There’s several that have slipped under the radar, but are
well known from science books and dinosaur encyclopedias, but have made
occasional appearances. Chasmosaurus (or should I say Mojoceratops) was the
only dinosaur in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. Centrosaurus has appeared in
the documentary Dinosaur!, the short Prehistoric Beast, and has been popular
in dinosaur art (sometimes as Monoclonius). A lot of the most recent
ceratopsians such as Xenoceratops, Diabloceratops, Medusaceratops and so forth
are too new to become engrained in media and culture.

However, one dinosaur has really had a short
shrift, and poor Anchiceratops deserves its due.

Anchiceratops was discovered by Barnum Brown, the same
American Museum scientist who discovered Tyrannosaurus and Ankylosaurus. The
specimen, parts of a skull, are now at American museum.Charles Sternberg, the great Canadian
paleontologist, found a headless body and a bodiless skull, and so mounted them together in the Canadian Museum of Nature.The Royal Tyrell Museum and University of Michigan Museum have complete skulls, and the
Field Museum and Royal Ontario museums have frill fragments. It’s actually
better known that most ceratopsians along withStyracosaurus, Centrosaurus, Chasmosaurus, (along with Vagaceratops and
Mojoceratops), Torosaurus, Pentaceratops, and Triceratops. However, it’s still rarer than most of the
other animals in the fauna.

Anchiceratops has
only been found in appreciable quantities in the Horseshoe Canyon Formation, 72
million year old Canadian rock.Other
unique species include the ankylosaur Andontosaurus, the alvarezsaur
Albertonykus, the dromeosaur Atrociraptor, the even rarer ceratopsians odd
Arrhinoceratops and giant Eotriceratops, the small ornithopod Parksosaurus, the
big hadrosaur Saurolophus, and the tyrannosaur Albertosaurus.These species have only appeared in
fragmentary form at best in other formations, but are well-represented
here.The environment appears to be a temperate
swamp not unlike Louisiana today. W.J. Langston and Jordon Mallon have both
argued that the long snout and stout build was an adaptation for amphibious habits,
and that it is better represented at the Horseshoe Canyon because of the swampy
environment that the animal would have preferred.This
theory is supported by Anchiceratops being rare in other contemporary
formations, like the floodplains of the Oldman Formation and the poorly
preserved St. Mary River Formation. There is a similar, unnamed genus at the
Dinosaur Park and Almond formations that only recently has been considered
distinct from Anchiceratops.

The fact that the species, along with Albertosaurus and
Saurolophus, has been restricted to the formation may explain their extinction.
At around 70 million years ago, the recession of the Western Interior Seaway
dried the adjoining deltas and river systems, eliminating the habitat. So Eotriceratops,
Anchiceratops, Albertosaurus, and Saurolophus were replaced by the new,
gigantic upland genera Triceratops, Torosaurus,
Tyrannosaurus, and Albertosaurus respectively. Faunal turnover is a fascination of mine, and
it’s interesting to speculate on how and why it occurred in the fossil record.

The animal was medium-sized as ceratopsians went-about 16
feet according to the Ottawa specimen, but if I was a lightly-built
Albertosaurus, I’d still approach with caution.The distinguishing features are the long snout, a pair of forward-facing
epoccipitals (the triangular ornamental
spikes on the frills of all ceratopsians), small parietal fenestrae (holes in the frills of all ceratopsians but
Triceratops), square frill, short tail, and long neck.

Art by DinoHunter000 from DeviantArt

I think it’s this
rarity that keeps it obscure.Albertosaurus is also unique to the formation, but has been fleshed out
by a dozen incomplete individuals of various ages as well as the close relative
Gorgosaurus. Another obscurity is simply
because it didn’t live in the climactic days of the Maastrichtian
age-Torosaurus and Ankylosaurus are similarly uncommon, but share the sites
with the well-represented and famous Edmontosaurus, Tyrannosaurus and
Triceratops.It’s just bad luck, and as
a luckless underdog, I can easily relate.Here’s hoping we find more of Anchiceratops (along with the Dinosaur
Park and Almond formation ceratopsian that may or may not be the same genus).

So anyway, Hollywood,
give this guy a break. Museums, keep him on display. Toy companies, here’s a
new fresh face. Authors, think about the crap you’re writing and how this genus
could perk up the place. And remember, shop Anchiceratops where you work or
play.

For another brief
overview, here’s a post from the far superior Tetrapod Zoology blog by the incomparable
Darren Naish http://scienceblogs.com/tetrapodzoology/2009/04/20/anchiceratops/

About Me

Hi everyone! You may know me already, but 99% of you won't. I've decided to make a blog for myself. I'm a anthropology student who has returned to his original passion for palaeontology. Ever since I was little, I've been fascinated with the weird and wonderful animals that have inhabited our planet and I've made this blog to keep this in my mind and hopefully in yours. Most people blog about their interests, and while I've got a range of interests-see history and anthropology above, not to mention zoology, astronomy, art, cooking, science fiction and fantasy films and literature, and a myriad of others, the one I want to do for a living is the study of Earth's ancient past.

On this blog I'll review papers, talk about fossils, museums, and taxa, review art, film, literature, and our culture's view of paleontology, and share memories and insights. I've been inspired by the far better blogs of professional palaeontologists, and I'll share them as time goes on. I'm also open to requests and questions of opinions, the latest palaeo news, and discussions with other fans informal and professional.

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